Podcast 9: Black Suffering with James Henry Harris: Paul Ricoeur's Oneself as Another
By John Kendall Hawkins
Reverend James Henry Harris is a Distinguished Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology and a research scholar in religion and humanities at the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, Virginia Union University. He also serves as chair of the theology faculty and pastor of Second Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia. He is a former president of the Academy of Homiletics and recipient of the Henry Luce Fellowship in Theology. He is the author of numerous books, including Beyond the Tyranny of the Text and Black Suffering: Silent Pain, Hidden Hope (Fortress Press, 2020). His latest book is N: My Encounter with Racism and the Forbidden Word in an American Classic, a memoir that describes and critically wonders about a graduate English class he took on Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and provides crucial insight into the CRT conundrum.
This week we discuss Pail Ricoeur's Oneself as a Another.
The following is a transcript of our Zoom meeting on September 27, 2022. It has been edited.
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John Hawkins:
In the Introduction of Paul Ricoeur's Oneself as Another, the author references the famous philosophical slogan of Rene Descartes: Cogito, ergo sum: I think, therefore I am. Let's begin there. In relation to Black suffering, how does it apply?
James Henry Harris:
Yeah, that's a great question. I feel that, philosophically, I was always attracted to Descartes' cogito, ergo sum. But in more recent years, I've begun to kind of push back from it to some degree and to question it maybe just a little bit more because I think in some ways it has a kind of elitist bearing to it. But it's pretty much the only enduring thing that we have from Descartes's method. And we keep going back to it. From a Black suffering perspective, there has been a denial of the cogito and an effort to erase the whole notion of cogito ergo sum from Black consciousness, from an ontological perspective -- a denigration of Black being, a dehumanization that has put the notion of I am and I think outside of the realm of Black humanity. Blacks [were seen as] animals or, some kind of tool of implementation. The slave was compared to farm animals and farm implements, not to being human. And that became foundational.
Hawkins:
Any person can answer the question of whether they exist by the fact that I can't doubt that I think, so therefore I exist, and that it would apply to any human being, anybody. But slaves are being told that they're functionaries -- tools of the farm like a John Deere tractor. Thinking is expression of freedom. It's absolute freedom. You can think anything you think. And so if you're denied the cogito, then you never really express linguistically, in your own mind, this idea of I am a free man.
Harris:
Yeah, the cogito is grounded in the notion of doubt. The doubting in and of itself creates the ability to be. And the whole idea and notion and practice of being was systematically extricated from Black existence. There's also a Eurocentric hegemony grounded in Descartes's maxim that elevates the cogito. That limits other concepts of freedom. For example, it is not just thinking that establishes one's ontological status of being, but it could be something else -- I believe, therefore, I am. I suffer, therefore I am. Make it more expansive, as it relates to the whole ontological idea and concept of being.
Hawkins:
The Cogito reminds me of the work with language that Noam Chomsky is most famous for and his utterances on the nature of consciousness. He says that "the overwhelming use of language is internal -- for thought," of a merge of the idiosyncratic with the universal. This illuminates the Cogito. But others argue that such linguistic archetypes are not present and that language is there not primarily for thinking but social interaction. Interesting stuff. And I recall reading about Africans on slave ships coming from different tribes, many of them not knowing the same language, starting over again in America and needing to learn the new language of their oppressor. It's an imposition on the Cogito, wouldn't you say?
Harris:
I think so. It's an imposition of facilitation. I mean, they were forced to [accommodate] a whole new language and think about how to communicate with each other, all coming from different tribal geopolitical areas. They were thrown into a situation of becoming adaptable. I do believe that language is critical and language houses a lot of the elements of perception and so forth, but, at the same time, I think that Black slaves were able to communicate to some degree with one another without even knowing the language or the particulars of the language that each brought to the slave ship. And so, for example, I don't speak Swahili, and I don't speak the language of many of the Africans that I'm associated with. But there is something about my connection and dealing with them. I've had students and others that I've worked with from places like Ghana and Liberia and other places who've had their own travel languages. But I've been able to a lot of times, even in the public worship and in church, I will call on them to pray, not in English, but in their native travel tongue. And strangely enough, there is something about the language that speaks to my soul. It's complex because I cannot fully interpret it, but there is something deep within our consciousness that makes some kind of connection that is, in some sense, beyond language. And I will say to the congregation, you know, if you focus hard enough, you may understand some of what is being said. It's a language that I don't speak either, but it's a language that I want to hear. And I want to hear it because it broadens my own concept of self. And I also want to hear it because I recognize that my own language has been extirpated intentionally from my consciousness.
Derrida in his little book, Monolingualism of the Other, says, and I quote, "I have but one language" yet that language is not mine." And that's the way I feel about my own language. I speak English, but it's a language that is not mine. It's not my original language. And I say, African-Americans are the only people in the world that I know whose language has been systematically and intentionally extirpated from their consciousness, from their history. And it's the first step in. It's the first step in kind of re-conscious-tizing people such that their understanding of self and of being is erased. You're forbidden to speak your own language. That is beyond humanity. It's inexplicable...It's an extraordinary project -- the slave system, the slave- ocracy, a government-endorsed American project to really annihilate and to take away the humanity of a whole race of people.
Hawkins:
Yeah, well, that's right. And what you're saying sounds parallel to the cogito. And if the language you start out with, that lets you know you have a mind and allows you to freely roam in your own mind, is taken away from you by systematic oppression in the act of forcing you to adopt some other form of communication and vocabulary, then that's totally evil. And it makes me wonder about the import and purpose of Ebonics and rap. You know, a part of the struggle of being free in America for Blacks seems to be taking charge of one's own language. You can't doubt with someone else's language. It's not genuine. To get their language back, to regain the dignity of self, have their own understanding that goes beyond the dominant language.
Harris:
I think clearly there is something to that. Yeah, the rappers, and others, are reclaiming and reinventing; creating something that is new. I had a student who is now a doctoral student Edinburgh is who has written a short paper comparing Ebonics with the German language. He's saying that there's a connection between Ebonics and German, and maybe some other languages as well, that he's continuing to work on. But I'm thinking that language is an important element in one's development. One learns [from] Piaget to Chomsky, they're all in agreement in terms of how language is developed. And when you set about to start over again, if you're an adult forced to learn a whole new language that becomes a real issue and a real complication. And there [is] a resistance in my soul.
Hawkins:
Ricoeur critiques (but doesn't entirely reject) the Cogito, seeing in it a kind of straw man effect. It's a subject, he writes, created out of doubt; a tautology really, that ends in, as Ricoeur sums it up, with the expression, "I exist thinking." Is this your read? And how does it apply to Black suffering?
Harris:
I don't have a real problem with it. It's just that the universality of Descartes's maxim is powerful, but, at the same time, I have concern about the whole thinking project - [its premise] has put Black people under siege and has been connected with annihilation and terror.
I want to read just a paragraph from One Self as Another. It's Ricoeur's third philosophical intention:
The third philosophical intention"this one explicitly included in the title"is related to the preceding one, in the sense that ipse-identity involves a dialectic complementary to that of selfhood and sameness, namely the dialectic of self and the other than self. As long as one remains within the circle of sameness-identity, the otherness of the other than self offers nothing original: as has been noted in passing, "other" appears in the list of antonyms of "same" alongside "contrary," "distinct," "diverse," and so on.
It's a key quote. He pairs otherness and selfhood -- otherness of a kind that can be constitutive of selfhood as such. Early on in the book, he tries to make a distinction between two Latin phrases - idem and ipse -- both expressing the self. But, in this case, this notion of oneself, he is arguing that this notion of otherness is constitutive of selfhood in a very real sense.
Hawkins:
What is Oneself as Another? Subject as its own reflective object? Mirror or projection?
Harris:
Yeah, I think that's the question [we're] trying to get it. That's what makes this book probably one of [Ricoeur's] densest writings. I mean, it's more dense than the role of metaphor, and more dense than interpretation theory, which I thought was dense enough. I mean, I've studied interpretation theory for probably 13 or 15 years and still don't completely understand it. And it's only 99 pages. I mean, it's one of the smallest books ever. But I tell my students, because my students have to read interpretation theories as well, in homologues classes that I teach, because it's a bridge towards certain development and sermon preparation. My students throw the book on the floor, throw it up against the wall. It has encountered so much abuse in my classes, and if you want preachers to begin using a string of expletives, ask them to read Ricoeur's Interpretation theory. But his notion of the meaning of the text is in front of it really captured my attention as a scholar and as a preacher because textuality is one of the things that I deal with, and for him say that the meaning of a text is in front of it --not a complete turn from people like Schleiermacher and others, but at least giving a much more forward look to the notion of interpretation. And that was just liberating for me, and really endeared me to Ricoeurian phenomenology and philosophy.
Harris:
But clearly the question is the complexity of the fact that as African-Americans we are still trying to be ourselves, and this notion of oneself as another complicates that being because Blacks have not even been allowed to be a self first. There has been a denial of selfhood
Harris:
This becoming another has also been a kind of sublimation of the self when it comes to Blacks trying to be what the society or the culture has deemed a standard. And a lot of Black life, after slavery, and through Reconstruction and so forth, was simply to try to prove that Black people could do what white people did, could do all kinds of things. There were so many theories out there being postulated by intellectuals, and others, that focussed on the denial of the humanity of Black people. You know, tests, social homogenization, all kinds of other things that were designed to propagate the inferiority. So, One Self as Another - clearly, Ricoeur's trying to suggest that there is an element of otherness in the self. And he says otherness is constitutive of selfhood. And I agree with that. I'm saying that the prelude to that is the establishment of selfhood.
Hawkins:
Well, it sounds like that's where the concept of something like Woke comes in, you know, the the waking up of consciousness, and, going back to Ricoeur's concept of "I exist thinking" and how that's different than the cogito" I've been in a coma, two or three times, and remember the last time I came out of a coma, it was kind of like a light bulb experience, a dimmer turned up and there was a flash in my head, an awareness of sounds around me, and I didn't know what they were at first --it just gradually came to me. A language came to me for understanding what I was hearing, but gradually. Like I would hear human voices, but I didn't know it was nurses and doctors whispering, but I didn't really understand what they were saying. You know, it seems like Black consciousness might be like coming out of the coma of whiteness, and in waking up to its own perceptions again. Take back what's been lost and stolen.
Harris:
I think that Paul Dunbar expresses it succinctly in his great poem, "We Wear the Mask":
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,"
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
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So part of what I'm saying is that there is a reluctance in Black life to be the self, according to Paul Laurence Dunbar, [and we wear] the mask. Because Blacks often have to pretend. To be something other. To be happy in the midst of sadness, to feel free in the midst of bondage. And so this whole notion of wearing the mask is a kind of attenuated self for the purpose of survival. Of not being not being annihilated again. It's kind of a mitigation against the suffering and against the pain. Sometimes it's too much for me to even think about. Yeah. So, you know, this is the thing: While I have great admiration for Descartes, as well as Paul Ricoeur, I also have to filter whatever they say through the lens of doubt, which may bring us full circle to part of what we're talking about.
Hawkins:
Do you have something that you want to close with?
Harris:
[I will read from my essay on Ricoeur]:
Oneself as Oneself and Not Another.
In many ways, this is about self-esteem, the interpretation of self, and not allowing one's self-understanding to be determined by another, regardless of speech, dialect, vocal frying[?] of words or efforts to hegemony or homogenize blacks whose entire sojourn in America has been marked by annus horribilis. The horrible. This is not an assertion of the supreme plenitude of oneself, because there is an inherent formative lack pervasively inculcated in the human body and spirit.
Contrary to some regimes, there is no ontological sovereignty in humanity, only an ever present lack. So the language of the British monarchy and the recent death of Queen Elizabeth, the second and the ubiquitous bandying about of the moniker sovereignty has been off putting to me as a descendant of African-American slaves. The pomp and pageantry surrounding the historical event was understandable, and like others, I empathize with human suffering, regardless of the oppressive acts of the perpetrators of such suffering and evil upon another. Sojourner Truth is right in characterizing slavery as an evil so far reaching that it is indescribable. It is beyond words. So I cannot help but correlate the constant signification of the language of sovereignty with the forces of oppression, corruption, dehumanization and evil. That is the lordship of Hegel in his master slave dialectic.
For me, the ugliness of sovereignty was the metronomic tautological understanding of the slave master whose actions and judgments were without earthly appeal. No other, or not another, regardless of one's association with the slave master, could keep slaves from being murdered, auctioned, raped and sold at the pleasure and behest of the sovereign slave master. So, I am compelled to problematize the word and its meaning, especially in American and British history and culture. While the slave master and the British monarchy are homological, there is no homologous connection between the king and Queen of Great Britain and the notion of sovereignty inherent in the concept of God. The current state of statement God is sovereign has no earthly complementarity. However, the slave master is homologous to the British monarchy.
Now, as I suggested earlier, it is an incontrovertible and established fact that in addition to skin pigmentation color, and other things, Blacks are discriminated against based on the way they sound, how they use certain words that is the verb to be, etc., and the immediacy of their skin color. This linguistic profiling is as discriminatory and racist as visual profiling, blatant and ubiquitous discrimination based on skin pigmentation. Whether on the phone or in person. Blacks are encouraged to not be themselves, but rather to be another, thereby exacerbating what Dubois termed double consciousness in The Souls of Black Folk.
And no one who is white, or non-black and in her right mind, is trying to become Black oneself as not. Another seems to be the philosophy and practice of whites, especially if another is defined as Black. There appears to be limitations on otherness that one seeks to emulate. Another that is an extension of the self. The split self of Ricoeur is akin to what I call the dialectic self and a self that Carl Jung references as well. While I have a long standing interest in and admiration for the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur and his great work in this paper, I want to explore reversing his maxim of Oneself as Another to Oneself as Oneself, by expanding the notion of getting in front of the self as text, to create a new understanding of the self and of the world. A world where Blacks are human beings in their own eyes first, and secondarily in the eyes of another, without sacrificing and sublimating the self, and thereby becoming another at the expense of one's authentic self. This authentic desire by Blacks for being oneself, or being themselves, has always manifested itself as a struggle against the forces of racism, against the forces of annihilation, and against the forces of evil. I'll stop there.
